WHOOSH—
A magical tempest tore through the void of the mountain clearing, one that only Luna could sense with her peculiar sensitivity to magical disturbances. She had been circling the arena in her assigned patrol pattern, and now she raised her voice in a sharp, piercing cry that cut through the howling wind.
"Cedric, on your side! They're coming!"
Cedric stood ready on the rocky slope at the edge of Passage One. He snapped to attention instantly, every nerve coiled and ready.
The shrubs lining the zigzagging path swayed violently in the howling blizzard that never stopped. The wall of snow mist blanketing the passage's depths began to churn and swirl, disturbed by movement. Three small, dark shapes gradually emerged from the white haze, resolving into distinct forms.
'Here they come. First wave.'
Cedric narrowed his eyes, his wand hand shifting subtly into a better casting position.
Three ice-sculpted house-elves conjured with uncanny precision and remarkable detail. As they drew closer, jogging forward, Cedric could make out the delicate bristles of fur along their enormous bat-like ears.
He made no attempt to conceal himself or hide behind cover, yet the three creatures paid him no mind at all, as though he were invisible. They only brandished their tiny ice-carved fruit knives shrieking in their strange, high-pitched tongue as they charged straight for the stone platform where Fleur and Viktor stood guard by the lighthouse.
He had faced far worse enemies than this.
Cedric exhaled with relief, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. This was manageable.
He swept his wand down in a sharp, decisive arc, and a burst of concentrated fire split the frigid air with a roar. The three house-elves detonated in an instant, blown apart in every direction by the explosive spell.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Shards of ice exploded outward in all sizes—some as large as his fist, others like needles. A pang of unease flickered across Cedric's face as the upper half of one elf sailed past him in a lazy arc, its expression frozen eternally in a grimace of pain. The detail was a bit disturbing due to being too realistic.
WHOOSH!
A streak of pale blue light sliced across his cheek without warning. Cedric lurched backwards with a startled gasp of pain, nearly tumbling off the slope. The elf's torso smashed into the stone wall behind him and shattered into crystalline fragments.
Cedric instinctively pressed two fingers to his stinging cheek and watched, with a sick, sinking feeling in his stomach, as tiny ice crystals bloomed across his skin where the knife had cut him. The frost crept visibly down onto his hand like a living thing.
"Are you all right, Cedric?" Hermione's voice called out from Passage Three, alarm obvious in her tone.
"Watch yourselves!" Cedric shouted back, touching the spreading frost with horror. "The house-elves throw their knives when you hit them! They have a dying attack!"
"Did I forget to mention that detail?" Viktor shouted across the arena from the platform, his voice was carrying a bit of sheepish apology.
"The elves throw knives when destroyed, the goblins have a spell that blasts you off your feet, the centaurs shoot ice arrows from a distance, the werewolves have vicious claws that rake, the vampires bite, and the dragons breathe frost directly into your face when you attack them!"
"Oh, brilliant, very helpful timing, thank you!" Harry's sarcastic voice echoed back.
Harry pressed his lips together in a thin line of frustration. Three short goblins had appeared at the mouth of Passage Two, waddling forward with crude ice weapons.
"You have to obliterate them all at once, Harry!" Cedric warned, still pressing his hand to the spreading frost on his cheek. "Don't leave pieces that can retaliate!"
Shh, shh, shh—
The goblins came trotting toward the entrance in a disorganized cluster, completely ignoring Harry's presence as though he didn't exist. There was no need to lead them or lure them closer, waiting until they were bunched together at the entrance would serve him far better tactically.
Objectively speaking, a lone warrior storming a heavily guarded tower had almost no realistic chance of success against overwhelming numbers. But six fighters pooled from four teams, working in coordination, made the challenge far more manageable.
Drawing on Cedric's hard-won lesson, Harry raised his wand with careful aim and fired a modified Disarming Charm that split apart at its tip, branching into three separate red bolts of light like a trident, one bolt targeted at each goblin.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Three sharp detonations in rapid succession, hitting off stone. The goblins shattered into fragments without incident.
Clop, clop, clop—
Three centaurs came galloping toward Passage Three where Hermione stood watch.
Hermione had encountered real centaurs before in the Forbidden Forest, but never anything like these. Small as house-elves, sculpted entirely from translucent ice that refracted light, they had an oddly charming, almost gentle quality to them despite being enemies.
When the centaurs were still some distance from the entrance, they drew to a sudden, coordinated halt. With fluid movements, they swiftly nocked arrows to their delicate ice bows.
Hermione was momentarily transfixed by the sight of them, mesmerized by the graceful way they moved. That moment of distraction nearly cost her. The ice arrows split the air with whistling sounds and snapped her violently back to her senses.
"Protego!" Viktor roared from the platform, his sharp eyes were catching the three incoming arrows and their trajectory. He threw up a hastily-constructed magical barrier between Hermione and certain injury.
The arrows struck the shimmering barrier with sharp cracks and did not shatter like ice normally would. Instead, they dissolved slowly into pools of white frost, sending faint wisps of frozen vapor curling up like smoke. The cold radiated in waves.
Fleur watched the display with a grimace, imagining the impact. She didn't need to actually experience it to imagine what it would feel like to take one of those arrows directly to the body. The cold alone would be excruciating.
"What happened, Hermione?" Viktor called, puzzled by her lapse. "Why didn't you shield?"
"Oh—sorry, I... it was nothing!" Hermione stammered, embarrassed by her distraction. She steeled herself and finished off the three centaurs with quick, efficient spells.
"Stay sharp, everyone!" Viktor shouted with urgency. "It's about to get a great deal harder! The next wave is coming!"
Harry bent low into a crouch, his eyes were narrowing with intensity as he dialed every combat instinct to maximum alert. His grip tightened on his wand.
According to the intelligence Viktor had shared earlier during planning, the next wave would surge in with far greater numbers and far greater variety with a chaotic mix. Viktor had made many desperate attempts to push past this round during his solo tries, and had never once succeeded. This was the breaking point.
SHRIEK! SHRIEK!
Sure enough, barely ten seconds later with no time to catch breath or recover—a storm of shadowy shapes swarmed out of the blizzard from all three passages simultaneously.
CRASH!
The main force of ice creatures was still emerging from the snow when the centerpiece of the vanguard, a small ice dragon about the size of a large dog, suddenly unfurled its transparent wings with a sharp snap and launched itself powerfully into the air. It glided straight over the defensive line and into the arena above them, completely ignoring the ground forces.
"Damn it!" Harry cursed.
"Oh!" Hermione gasped.
"It can fly?!" Cedric shouted in disbelief.
Harry, Hermione, and Cedric all cried out from their respective posts, each in their own shock and dismay.
"You never said the dragons actually fly, Viktor!" Harry shouted across the arena, somewhere between frantic and furious.
The shock had cost him a precious split second of hesitation—and the ice dragon had already used that crucial moment to glide past the entrance defenses and into the arena proper.
BOOM!
Harry recovered just in time instinctively. He locked onto the dragon banking through the air on translucent wings and fired a powerful Disarming Charm that caught its long tail cleanly, severing it with a crack.
Rattle, rattle—
Without its tail for balance and steering, the dragon that had slipped into the square plummeted from the air like a stone, hitting the ground hard. It rolled across the snow-covered ground for nearly ten feet, tumbling end over end before it came to rest.
ROAR!
The ice dragon hauled itself upright with a roar that carried perhaps three-tenths of a real dragon's fury. But before it could roll around to take its revenge on Harry for the maiming, a torrent of brilliant, explosive musical notes came streaking through the air from Luna's position and finished it off entirely. The dragon shattered into fragments.
"Thanks, Luna!" Harry called out breathlessly with relief in his voice.
But Luna had no time to answer or acknowledge. Cedric had run into serious trouble of his own with another dragon that had emerged from Passage One, and Luna was already sprinting across the arena at full speed to pull them clear of danger.
WHOOSH!
A vicious gust of freezing wind swept in, and Harry felt cold dread settle heavily in his chest. He snapped his focus back to the passage in front of him, forcing himself to concentrate.
Five or six werewolves and vampires had broken away from the house-elves and goblins still streaming behind them, charging for the entrance in a dead sprint that made Harry's brow tighten with concern.
The werewolves and vampires advanced in a ragged, uncoordinated formation, too scattered to intercept in a single sweep of magic. They were spread across the width of the passage.
Harry registered this problem in a racing heartbeat.
There was no time to hesitate or overthink. Harry made his decision in an instant and acted on it, leaping off the stone slope and landing directly in the center of the narrow path. He blocked it with his own body, his eyes fierce with determination, his wand was rising.
"Incendio!" Harry roared the incantation.
BOOM!
A massive torrent of fire bloomed like a crimson lotus, swallowing the charging werewolves and vampires whole in a wall of flame. The heat was intense even from where he stood, warming his face.
Harry's powerful spell was like a battle horn signaling the true start of war, and the arena exploded in violent response.
Detonations rang out from every direction simultaneously. Incantations overlapped in a rolling, chaotic chorus. Flashes of dazzling light burst and scattered through the air like fireworks.
BANG!
Harry sustaining the flames through sheer force of will and magical power felt sweat prick at his forehead despite the freezing temperature.
A continuous spell like this drained magic far faster than a standard charm—burning through his reserves. He was weighing whether to make a tactical retreat when the space directly in front of him erupted suddenly in a sphere of ice-blue light.
WHAM!
It hit him like a fist to the face. Harry staggered backwards, stars were bursting across his vision, his body was speeding back on legs that no longer obeyed him. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs.
His fire magic collapsed and died.
As he lurched and fell, Harry caught a glimpse of a small ice goblin extending one hand toward him with malicious intent and snapping its fingers with a sharp crack.
SNAP!
Harry had barely hit the ground hard and hadn't yet managed to push himself upright when an ice arrow slammed into his left forearm with tremendous force.
"Hss!" Harry sucked in a sharp breath through clenched teeth.
But there was no time to dwell on injury or pain. The creatures he had drawn with his flames had fixed their hatred on him personally, and their attacks came piling in from every angle at once.
Explosive flashes. Ice arrows. Ice blades. Raking claws that split the air. A torrent of strikes, relentless and without end, poured over him like a flood trying to drown him.
Harry's face went pale as ash. He finally understood viscerally why Viktor had been so utterly beside himself with frustration before, why he'd failed so many times.
"Protego!" Harry roared the incantation desperately.
He threw up a hastily-constructed magical barrier, bracing himself to absorb the onslaught head-on. The shield flickered and wavered under the barrage.
With the way to Passage Two blocked by Harry's position, the creatures at the back of the charge scattered in confusion. They scrambled up the stone slopes on either side, poured around the flanks, and flooded into the arena from multiple directions driving straight for the beacon lighthouse that was their true objective.
Harry's desperate situation was reflected exactly at the other two passages. Hermione and Cedric had both underestimated these crystalline constructs despite Viktor's warnings. They had underestimated what the ice sculptures were capable of in coordinated numbers.
At least twenty ice creatures had now broken through into the square from all three paths simultaneously.
Luna moved through the chaos like a conductor directing an orchestra, her wand was slashing in every direction, sending streams of explosive musical notes weaving between the creatures to cut them down.
In her trail, the arena was littered with shattered limbs and broken bodies.
But even she could not clear them all fast enough. The numbers were overwhelming.
One by one, more creatures slipped past and united on the stone platform where the lighthouse stood. They began their assault on the structure.
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